Norwescon 22 Post-Con Report

Dublin Core

Title

Subject

Description

Publisher

Norwescon

Date

1999

Format

8.5x11 paper

Language

English

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Norwescon 22 PostCon Report

Reverberations from a Past Chair

by William Sadorus

Norwescon 22 is now a thing of the past. I hope all of you had an excellent time, I know I did. This is my opportunity to thank all of the ConCom staff for producing a great convention and for enriching fandom in the experience. All of the staff deserves a medal for putting up with me while making NWC 22 a memorable convention. A heartfelt thanks to all of you on the ConCom.

Norwescon 22’s theme, Alternate Realities: The Road Not Taken, was extremely well presented and a lot of fun to do. Don Glover, as my Vice-Chair, worked hard at keeping me on the straight and narrow, while supporting the underpinnings of the con. Judith Herman, NWC 22 Programming Director, set new standards for fascinating programming. Lisa Woodings stepped into running Membership Services for the convention this year and did an excellent job while being thrown into the fire, what with Norwescon officially selling out of memberships for the first time. Cheryl Ferguson, Betty and Jayson Claar, and Michael Brocha rounded out the Executive Team with their expertise in Convention Services, Personnel, Financial Services, and Publications. All of these people are dear friends of mine, and I found myself very lucky in having them work on NWC 22. Alas, Don, Judith, and Lisa have decided to take a step back and pursue either lesser positions or entirely different pursuits. Cheryl, Betty, Jayson, and Michael continue to toil away on 23. Thanks for your commitment and sheer genius at NWC 22. We couldn’t have done it without you.

As for our Guests of Honor, we had the best! Our Writer GoH, Harry Turtledove, was kind, gracious, and extremely brilliant in his presence at the con. During a rare lull in programming, I ran into Harry in the Dealers Room where he was signing books and chatting with the occasional fan. With all due respect to previous NWC Guests of Honor, I don’t believe I’ve ever met a more approachable and friendly writer at a convention. And, I can’t say enough good things about Jack Horner, Science GoH. Friendly, witty, and daring, he managed to entertain, mesmerize, and chal- lenge all of us with his views on life and our beliefs in iconoclastic sciences. Jack managed to upstage our master of ceremonies, Richard Stevens, several times to the amusement of our members. Then there was the slightly embarrassing situation in the ballroom lobby Saturday night during the Masquerade, when I was talking to Jack, his wife, and her father—but wait, I won’t go into that here. You’ll have to look me up at NWC 23 and buy me a couple of drinks before I tell you the rest of that story.

I know I haven’t mentioned everything that was special, noteworthy, or that should be mentioned about NWC 22 in this article, but I’m running out of room. My apologies to anyone I’ve left out and my thanks to all of you. Just because I decided not to run for Chair again for NWC 23 doesn’t mean you’ve gotten rid of me— I’m still around working for my new boss, Pat Booze, Norwescon 23 Chair, doing Public Relations and the Philip K. Dick Award Ceremony. She’s got her work cutout for her—Good Luck Pat! Thanks again everyone, and, see you at Norwescon 23.

Norwescon 22 Volunteers

by Betty Claar

Wow. I can’t believe another convention year has passed. I think you should all be proud of the part you played in putting on Norwescon 22. Without you, the convention just wouldn’t be what it is.

Let’s get the numbers out of the way. Our records indicate that there were 208 volunteers who signed up in the Volunteer Lounge along with 77 concom members for a total of 285 volunteers. Only 119 reported their hours worked in various departments, with the total hours coming to 1,518. This averages out to 12.75 hours worked per volunteer.

New this year was the Club Competition. We only had three clubs sign up, which wasn’t bad for a first year. The winning club for Norwescon 22 was the Camarilla. They pitched in when we really needed it, especially on Wednesday evening when we started taking over the hotel.

I personally want to thank Mary Westerling, Denise Prowes, Vicki Rudesill, Connie Kesterson, Terry Swan, Prudence Bonas, Becky Citrak, and EJ Fadgen for their support during the past year. They each deserve a round of applause for putting on a wonderful convention for all the volunteers and runners. I also want to thank my pet Camarilla—he was so helpful running errands for me. I don’t think I would have made it through the first two days of the con without him.

In closing, I want to thank all of you for your support over the last five years that I have been working with you in Staff Support, Volunteers and Personnel. I will be in a different position for Norwescon 23, but I do look forward to seeing all of you volun- teers during the con. Norwescon’s Volunteers Rock !

Norwescon 22 Video

by Russ Rudesill

Oh, it’s time to write the post con report. I thought the con was just yesterday, it must have been that short stay in intensive care. Oh yeah, it coming back to me: the faces, the noises, ah, yes, the con...

Well, let me see—there were people and events new and old. Preparation started months earlier...

Russ: “The list. Where is the list?’ Vicky: “Isn’t it where you put it?” Russ: “Well that depends” Vicky: “On what?” Russ: “If you can remember where I put it.” Vicky: “Here let me look... Yep, here it is.” Russ: “Wow. Great. Where was it?” Vicky: “Right on your desk in front that video monitor under that half eaten bag of Dorito’s next to that teetering stack of video tapes and that spaghetti of video cables.” Russ: “Yeah, right where I thought it was.”

Anyway I got my list and I had it ap- proved I started making my tapes and find- ing my stuff. This might not sound to hard but we had been moving and most every- thing was still in boxes or stuffed in Danny’s room. Which, by the way, he hasn’t been able to sleep in since we moved here over a year ago. As a matter of fact I need to tie a rope to myself and notify park officials so they will know when to send in a search party. Well, as I dug it out and moved it to the living room, the pile O-stuff began to creep towards the ceiling. But Vicky didn’t mind and I never got hassled about it once. “Yeah.Right” It does pay to have an understanding spouse. “Thanks, Dear.”

We finally got everything together and hauled over to Mike Citrak’s and stuffed into his spacious garage. “Can you say shoe-horn?” Tuesday night we loaded the truck, said goodbye to the Powtowski brothers and went home for the last full-night’s sleep we would get for the next five days. We woke early and Vicky drove me back to Mike & Becky’s so I could ride up with them. She had to wait for the kids to get out of school and then bring them all up. Raise your own volunteers. It’s not cheap, but it’s harder for them to say no.

We arrived at the hotel and immediately helped to unload the last of the truck from the North and check our stuff over. Setup commenced almost immediately by moving this pile to Grand 3 and that one to hospitality. The rest is a blur as the activity increased to a feverish pitch. There are moments that do surface: running the live video cable (thanks for volunteers); setting up for the Masquerade (again, thanks for volunteers); video taping the Masquerade (thanks to Danny, Coby, Jesse, Joel and Alan—more volunteers); and then there was teardown (more thanks for volunteers). I think you can see where this is going. We had a lot of things to do and we got a lot of help from a lot of volunteers. ‘Nuff said. The video channels turned out pretty well. This was a new hookup for us and I heard that one of the channels was a little dark and the volume a little low. Sorry. We’ll try harder next time. This year’s Masquerade proved to be a difficult one for setup. We had two problems with the live feed. The first one was no signal through the 500-foot plus cable carefully installed earlier. The reason—I discovered—was that the outer shield of the cable had stretched, letting the center conductor pull out of the cable coupler. Turned it off like a switch. So I had to stop in the middle of the setup, trouble shoot the problem, and with help of (you guessed it) another volunteer, fix it on the spot.

Once we had the live feed working we found that there was a hum in the audio caused by a difference in the ground from the headend room to Grand 3. This was not acceptable. We worked on finding a suitable electronic solution to the problem but were unable to do so. Fortunately, Alan Halfhill came up with a novel idea. We took a spare video camera and monitor, put the camera on a small tripod focused on the monitor—which was connected to the master deck—and viola! we had an optically-isolated live feed connection to the hotel. It wasn’t the best looking and there was a little trouble with the camera microphone picking up our chatter, but Alan had a fix for that too. He put his lapel mike close to some headphones then stuffed the whole thing into an empty camera bag to create an instant sound stage. The whole thing turned out pretty well. We all had a lot of fun and the Masquerade went out live. What more can I say?

Last on the list—you remember the list? I have had a lot of fun volunteering on the concom as head of Media Services. I learned many new things, met a lot really neat people, attacked the technical challenge head-on and became more technically savvy. There are no words to describe the benefits associated with serving in this capacity. Unfortunately I must move on. At this time, I am passing the baton to Alan Halfhill. He has been a part of Northwest fandom for several years, a professional videographer and producer of many other projects and media assistant for the Masquerade for many years. He seems to be looking forward to this new challenge. He brings with him years of experience and possesses a collection of videos uniquely suited to next year’s theme. Out with the old in with the new.

Member Services

by Lisa Woodings

Member Services is a collection of departments, that all went very well for Norwescon 22. There were a few minor problems which were all resolved, and no major problems. Thanks to all of my staff, and especially the volunteers. KidKon was hidden upstairs and very happy there. Information worked well with the same dedicated volunteer help. Carolyn Palms had two volunteers with her in the Cloak Room who really helped out in a pinch. The dances and other entertainment events were well attended and everyone had fun. The video program went fairly smoothly with the expected, but always unusual, technical problems. Static Services (Dealers Room, Gaming, Hospitality, Fanzine Library, and the contracted Art Show) went smoothly as usual. Registration went through the early stages of some major data handling changes, but went smoothly except for a failed experiment one evening. Once again, we were saved by some dedicated volunteers that we hope to see again next year. Remember, we sold out of memberships Saturday evening. It could happen again. So buy your Norwescon 23 membership soon and plan to volunteer at some of our most popular jobs.

Norwescon 22 Charitable Events

by Ben Schreiber

The Charitable Events were very successful this year—it really helped that this was my only responsibility, but your collective response was what made my efforts yield fruit. At the Richard Wright Memorial Blood Drive we had 57 donors. About 200 pounds of food & supplies were donated to Northwest Harvest, along with $115.50 donated by members at registration (including a 50% matching challenge from an anonymous donor).

This year I decided to try something new—a charity auction, also to benefit Northwest Harvest. This was a great success! Most of the dealers donated merchandise for the auction, and we were able to raise $505! Thanks go to all involved!